No. 3-2

More Short Fictions

Richard Kostelanetz. More Short Fictions, Assembling Press, 1980

In a note at the end of the book Richard Kostelanetz explains, “Most of my fictions are based upon intentionally radical formal experiments: stories with only one word to a paragraph, or two words; single-sentence stories that are either the opening sentences of hypothetical stories that might follow or the closing sentences of hypothetical stories that might have come before or, more recently, single sentence epiphanies of non-existent longer stories; stories composed entirely of numbers or entirely of line drawings that metamorphose in narrative sequences that are sometimes.. rigorously systematic.”

Examples of these compositional strategies (and many others) are at play in More Short Fictions, calling upon the reader to develop his or her own new strategies for reading that take into account the importance of the visual action of words in the construction of meaning.

(Excerpted from www.printedmatter.org)